


Adventures in Babysitting with Strickler & Blinky

by c0rn



Category: Tales of Arcadia (Cartoons), Trollhunters - Daniel Kraus & Guillermo del Toro
Genre: Blinky doesn't know what he's doing... or does he?, Comedy, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Rare Pairings, Ship Teasing, Strickler is stressed, censored cussing for extra funny, feat. Stricklander's familiar who I decided to call Walt Jr., indirect kissing, spoiler alert: it's blinkler
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-23
Updated: 2019-04-23
Packaged: 2020-01-24 00:34:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18560323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/c0rn/pseuds/c0rn
Summary: Taking care of half a hundred familiar babies rescued from the Darklands is hard work for both Barbara and Strickler. Because Barbara still has a job to do as doctor, she called in the most unexpected help in the form of Blinky. The struggle is real when a changeling and a troll must work together side by side.





	Adventures in Babysitting with Strickler & Blinky

**Author's Note:**

> I would like to thank Astrocat#6075 from discord (a.k.a endlessnightarts on tumblr and [ColorfulFlowersToo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ColorfulFlowersToo/pseuds/ColorfulFlowersToo) on this site) because our back and forth in the Trollhunters server gave me this idea, and they were also the first ones to think of their Good Dad/Bad Dad (more like, bad dad/worse dad tbh) dynamic. If you're reading this, this was partly inspired by you.
> 
> Also, yeah, I'm writing another fic for this fandom? Is it the apocalypse or something? But what can I say? When you're inspired, you just have to. As an added bonus, this fanfic is totally PG. Another rare thing! I tried to make the narration more heterodiegetic than usual.
> 
> The only thing you need to know is that the story is set after the finale but without anything specific happening thereafter. It's anyone's guess why Blinky would be free to babysit and if Trollmarket is now in New Jersey or Arcadia Oaks. What's important is everyone is fine and dandy :D

Dr. Barbara Lake and Stricklander have been taking care of the babies since they were rescued from the Darklands. But because of work, Barbara had been feeling more tapped out from the added responsibility so she had called someone to help whenever she was out to work. Strickler was surprised when he heard a knock on the door to find…

“Blinkous? What are you doing here?” asked Strickler.

“Dr. Lake told me she needed help with taking care of the familiars,” he replied. “And please, just call me Blinky.”

“But why you specifically?” asked Strickler again.

“I haven’t the foggiest. But if I must guess, it’s probably because my greater number of limbs allows me to carry the greater amount of babies.”

Blinky happened to be the mentor of the Trollhunter (who was Jim Lake Jr. or ‘Young Atlas’ as Strickler had always called him) and their interactions were very limited at best save for that one time he and the now deceased Bular held him hostage. Rather than ponder on the past any longer, Strickler observed how much the troll knew about babysitting. When Blinky’s first instinct upon hearing a crying baby on a chair was to sit on it, he quickly pulled him away.

“What on earth are you doing?!” he asked with a bit of panic in his voice.

“I thought we were babysitting,” said Blinky casually. “This is how humans take care of their young not unlike how birds sit on their eggs, do they not?”

Strickler pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed a deep sigh. It was going to be a long day.

Lunch time came about and Strickler had asked Blinky to assist him with mixing the baby formula and putting them in the bottle which he had to demonstrate. Blinky was decent at first with the job, mixing the powdered milk with hot water but when he turned his head back to him, he then saw Blinky squirting whipped cream on to the bottles, mixing it with hot water, twisting the nipple back onto the bottle and giving it to the babies.

“That is not the formula,” exclaimed Strickler.

“I know, but we ran out,” explained Blinky. “So I thought to substitute it for the time being.”

“Why didn’t you just tell me? I would’ve bought some from the store,” he said.

Although it was a bad idea, Strickler decided that he would be the one buying the formula which meant leaving Blinky alone with the babies. He was afraid that if it were up to Blinky, he might buy something not fit for the babies’ consumption. Before he put on his glamour mask and left, he laid out some rules that Blinky must follow.

“Do not sit on the babies. Do not throw the babies. Do not give the babies sharp objects, especially knives. Do not give them food that is not milk. Do not take them for drives. Do not make them watch the wrong channel on TV. Do not eat the babies’ dirty nappies”--Walter recoiled a bit at the recent memory of seeing Blinky digging his hands from the diaper bin--”And most importantly, stay away from Walt Jr. I’ve seen you teaching him words that a child that young should not use in mixed company even if they’ve yet to speak.”

Blinky learned that the one baby Strickler was so attached to was obviously his familiar, named Waltolemew Stricklander who was called Walt Jr. or sometimes Junior. If he were a human, he would’ve found the name silly, but he merely ignored it. Speaking of ignoring, he found himself attached to Walt Jr. as well and took to teaching him behind Strickler’s back if simply to spite the changeling.

Strickler returned from the store and was welcomed with a loud noise. The speakers were blasting some very loud, hardcore hip hop music with the bass wound up very high. If that weren’t enough, there were words to the song which was very, very inappropriate indeed.

“Blinkous!” shouted Strickler. “What is the meaning of this?!”

“Welcome home, Stricklander!” greeted Blinky as loudly as he could through the music. He carried Walt Jr. in his lower arm. “I’ve successfully put the babies to sleep with this classic human song. I think it worked! Look at Walt Jr., he’s barely moving!”

“Give him to me!” Strickler pulled Walt Jr. from his arm. “You are going to ruin not only my familiar but these poor innocent creatures. I am ending this right now!”

Strickler stomped his way to the speakers and unplugged the appliance from the outlet. All at once, the babies started crying, including Walt Jr.

“What did you do that for? They were slumbering so peacefully,” exclaimed Blinky.

Stammering, Strickle was at a loss as to what he should do.

The speakers were later turned back on but with the music playing much more gentle tunes to lull the babies back to their nap. Strickler rocked two babies in his arms while Blinky rocked four.

“You can take off that mask now, you know.” Blinky referred to the glamour mask that allowed Strickler to assume his human form.

“I’ve grown quite fond of this form,” said Strickler. “Now that my familiar has been retrieved from the Darklands, I can no longer assume this form at will, sad to say.”

“I remember my short stint as a human after I’ve been exposed to some unknown potions. To make a long story short, my favorite parts were the sunshine and food.”

“Of course,” said Strickler dryly. Suddenly he was intrigued. “Wait, you were human?”

“Yeah. I also happen to own one of those masks. It’s how I drove my car to here. I took it off as soon as I stepped into the porch.”

Strickler’s interest was piqued. “May I see your form?”

“Maybe later,” said Blinky. “My hands are still full at the moment.”

Strickler and Blinky managed to get all the babies to sleep. They placed the last of the sleeping babies back onto their cribs. Blinky put on his own glamour mask and transformed into his portly human shape.

“Impossible. You’re even uglier in human form,” noted Strickler.

“I’ve lost two of my arms and most of my eyes. I’m inclined to agree.”

Strickler was annoyed that Blinky was not the least bit offended.

Afterwards they went into the kitchen for a light snack. That was Strickler’s intention, at least, when he went to make some tea and fix a sandwich while Blinky was loitering by the open fridge and eating anything he could find.

“This form might not be the most aesthetically pleasing,” said Blinky, “but it does allow me to enjoy the great tastes of what these human delicacies have to offer.”

Strickler looked on with slight revulsion at Blinky squeezing a continuous amount of whipped cream onto his mouth which began to fill up. “I think Barbara would appreciate if you don’t eat her out of house and home. Why don’t I make some tea for you just in case?”

“Oh, let me get the cream.” Blinky took the can from the fridge.

“Don’t you dare make a sacrilege out of this drink.”

“Then I guess it’s my turn to go to the store.” And so he did.

Strickler was relieved to be alone in the house as he was increasingly getting tired of Blinky’s antics. He ate his sandwich and drank his tea in silence, taking one deep breath after he finished. Then he heard one of the babies’ crying and he went up to check to see which one. It was Walt Jr.

He picked him up in his arms, and began comforting him. “Aw, did you have a bad dream?”

The baby calmed down in no time. Strickler was greeted by a cute smile. He looked at the baby and it seemed like he wanted to say something. Strickler, full of anticipation, wanted to know what it was. After some nonsense babbling, the baby managed to say:

“F***!”

Strickler could not believe his ears. His teeth clenched and his face turned red.

“Blinkyyyy!!!” he yelled into the heavens. Unfortunately, his unbridled rage awakened all of the babies once more, plunging the entire house into a cacophony.

“Oh f***...” cursed Strickler.

Blinky arrived home with a full paper bag of sweets when he too was greeted with a loud noise, although the noise did not come from the speakers.

“Weren’t these babies asleep when I left?” asked Blinky.

Strickler was in the corner of the room, all haggard and overwhelmed. “Don’t just stand there. Help!”

For whatever reason, Strickler decided to let the babies out of their cribs which resulted in the entire floor crawling with babies with them getting into mischief along the way. So Blinky put down the groceries and rushed to pick up one baby that managed to climb halfway up the stairs. Some of the babies proceeded to pull out a few books from the bookshelf which they proceeded to chew or drool on. That in particular made Strickler a little upset so he pulled them away as soon as possible. Blinky was not sure how agile human babies were so he had no idea how some of them ended up on the kitchen counter. One in particular was crawling dangerously near the stove so he grabbed that baby and picked up each one of them off the counter and brought them back into the living room. In case the babies planned to crawl away again, Blinky thought to open the TV to any random channel. A soap opera would have to do for now.

It took some time, but Strickler and Blinky have finally gathered all the babies one by one, sometimes two by two, in the living room. The babies seem rightfully hypnotized by whatever scenario was happening in the television. Strickler was not fond of seeing two women exchanging slaps and pulling each other’s hair onscreen in the late afternoon so he changed it to a more kid-friendly channel with talking and singing puppets. Much to his chagrin, he had to turn back to the previous channel when the babies began to make a fuss again.

“So, are all the babies accounted for?” he asked.

Blinky was counting them but stopped when he realized something “I think we’re missing Walt Jr.”

“You can’t be serious,” cried Strickler. “The one baby I consider the most important?”

Strickler looked all over the room then he noticed the front door which had been left open. Strickler gasped.

Blinky noticed his distress and he put an assuring hand on his shoulder. “Now, now. I’m sure he couldn’t have gone far with his squishy defenseless baby appendages crawling on the sidewalk heated by the afternoon sun.”

“You’re not helping,” hissed Strickler, pulling away from him. “In fact, you’re no help at all. You’ve had it out for me the moment you arrived. Corrupting my familiar, corrupting these babies, your limited grasp of child rearing putting them in danger--You’re a walking liability!”

“You can fling all these insults all you want after we save your familiar who might have wandered outside because we are wasting our time just standing here.”

“Fine. But this isn’t over.”

Strickler dashed out of the door and began calling out his familiar’s name.

“Huh. I could’ve sworn he was much calmer when I last met him,” said Blinky to himself before joining Strickler on the search for the wayward infant.

“Walt Jr.! Where are you?”

“Here, baby baby! Come out, come out, wherever you are!”

Strickler looked straight ahead. “Look, there he is,” he exclaimed.

Walt Jr. had barely made it past the Domzalski’s front yard. Strickler ran to him and swept the baby in his arms, hugging him tight. Blinky came running after.

“Hey, where’d you get that?” Strickler noticed the baby had a lollipop on his hand.

“He must’ve rummaged through my groceries before heading out,” said Blinky. “That’s mine.”

When Blinky took the lollipop away from Walt Jr., he began to cry very loudly.

“For goodness sakes, Blinkous, that is probably the worst thing you could do to a baby!”

Blinky did not get what he meant by that. Then an old lady, Nana Domzalski, who was walking back into her house was surprised at what she saw. Even with her bad vision, she managed to give Blinky a disapproving look.

“You should be ashamed of yourself,” she said, then proceeded to walk away.

“Oh… I see.” Feeling guilty now, Blinky decided to give back the lollipop to Walt Jr. who was very happy once more.

Strickler and Blinky went back home with Walt Jr. in tow. Before Blinky forgot, he picked up his dropped groceries near the front door and sat down on the couch beside Strickler while Walt Jr. rolled around his lap, playing with the lollipop that Blinky surrendered to him. All that running around made Blinky very hungry. He pulled from the bag a box of donuts which he offered some to Strickler.

“Do you want one?” he asked.

Several minutes had already passed when Strickler remembered saying to Blinky they were not done talking yet. While munching on a sugar coated donut, he turned to him. “I’ll be blunt. Why were you teaching my familiar profanities? And how did he pick it up so fast?”

“I don’t know.” Blinky shrugged. “Why did you take me hostage so Bular could have Killahead Bridge opened? And did you have to kill that school principal?”

“So much for no hard feelings.”

“I never said such a thing.”

“I know. But I thought you had forgotten that.”

“I never forget when someone puts my life on the line. Specifically when someone hangs me upside down from a ceiling with a rope. But even if you’ve never done that, I never liked you.”

“Because I’m an impure?”

“It used to be that, but also when you tried to get close to Dr. Lake to get to Master Jim which led you to putting a curse on her that meant if you were hurt, so would she, forcing him to not lay a finger on you. But why bring up the past, right? As the humans would say, ‘no hard feelings.’”

Strickler was unexpectedly wounded from hearing what Blinky said. He thought that he would be the one saying hurtful words to Blinky, not the other way around. What’s worse was that he wasn’t wrong.

“Listen, I didn’t mean to reopen any old wounds.” Blinky patted Strickler on the lap. “Besides, I think most of the people who know you have forgiven you by now. Master Jim certainly has. Also, you and Dr. Lake are together now, after all.”

“Not that kind of together.” Strickler sighed. “We are on friendly terms but that’s all we’ll ever be. I’m just helping her as much as I can because I want to. Don’t get me wrong, I do love her, but only as a friend.”

Blinky took a bite out of a donut he was holding and swallowed. “It can’t be helped. Things between you really got complicated when all her memories started flowing back after she was supposed to forget them. And you did try to kill her son.”

“I refuse to talk about this anymore,” said Strickler, huffing through his nose.

“Alright. I’m sorry if I spoke out of place,” said Blinky, twiddling his fingers.

“Don’t apologise. You were right to call me out but… I just don’t want to talk about it now.” They stopped talking for a bit until Strickler spoke to him again. “Pass me a doughnut, will you?”

“Oh, but there aren’t any more.” Blinky, who looked somewhat embarrassed, showed him the empty box.

“How on earth could you finish a dozen doughnuts in one sitting?”

“But you took one, so I only ate eleven of them!”

“Eating all of that sugar and flour will not do your digestion wonders, I’m telling you.”

Blinky was about to say something when he felt a rumble in his stomach. “That is not a good sign...” He jumped off the couch and ran upstairs to the bathroom.

Strickler grimaced upon hearing the noises from the upper floor. “Do close the door when you’re doing your business, would you?” he yelled.

After a while, Blinky emerged from the bathroom and slowly walked down the stairs and back to the couch. Strickler pulled away the groceries from his grasp when Blinky’s hand went to grab something from it.

“You’ve had enough sweets for one day,” he scolded, earning a frown from Blinky.

The sun started to set until it was now time for the babies’ night feed. Strickler made sure to check if Blinky was putting actual baby formula in the bottles. Fortunately for him, he did. He was learning, but very slowly.

“So were you really this naive at handling babies or back then, you were just trying to get under my skin?”

“Honestly, it was a little bit of both.”

The night was getting late for the babies so they both decided it was time for them to go to sleep. Blinky turned on the speakers again but remembering Strickler’s instruction to play the appropriate type of music.

“How can babies fall asleep to such soft music?” asked Blinky.

“Just trust me,” replied Strickler. “It’s better than a song about protesting the brute force implemented by some law enforcers. Not a bad song in itself, it’s just not something their young minds should be exposed to.”

“I just assumed they’d appreciate good rhythm and a steady beat.”

“Of course you do.” Strickler rolled his eyes.

The house became very quiet now that all the babies had fallen asleep. Strickler and Blinky retired to the dining table and sat there. Strickler pulled something out of his pocket, showing it to Blinky.

“I thought you’d want this back,” he said, handing over a lollipop. “I took it as soon as Walt Jr. fell asleep. He wouldn’t have any use for this anyway since he has no teeth yet.”

“Oh. That’s very thoughtful of you,” said Blinky, taking it from him. “Thank you very much.”

Blinky unwrapped the tiny ball of hard candy on a stick and put in his mouth. His face scrunched up a little at the flavor, so he pulled it out. “Oh, so that’s what lemon tastes like. I must say, I’m not quite fond of the taste. Do you want it?”

Strickler was thinking about the offer. “I don’t usually eat sweets.”

“Trust me, it’s not that sweet. Take it.”

Strickler was hesitant, but he took it off his hand. He put the lollipop in his mouth and he seemed to react to it more favorably than Blinky did. “Hm. Lemon. I sometimes put lemon on my tea. Some say it’s a bit posh but that's the way I prefer.”

“Consider this my way of making up for not considering you wanted another doughnut.”

“You are quite peculiar, Blinkous.”

“You’re one to talk, Stricklander.”

When Barbara came home that night, it was late, but not very late. Strickler and Blinky were just talking when she came home. So much so, they had forgotten to clean the house after all the chaos that Barbara had not seen. But she expected worse so she looked over it.

“I can’t thank you enough for taking the time to help us,” she said. “I hope they weren’t too much trouble.”

“They weren’t the only trouble,” muttered Strickler under his breath.

“Not at all, Dr. Lake,” said Blinky, shaking her hand. “Always happy to lend a hand. Or four, in my case. This would’ve worked better if I wasn’t wearing my mask now but you know what I meant. Anyway, I must return to Trollmarket. If you ever need my help again, don’t hesitate to call. Goodnight Dr. Lake.”

“Goodnight, Blinky,” said Barbara, waving goodbye.

“And goodnight to you too, Stricklander.” Blinky turned back to wave at him.

“Yes, yes. Goodnight, Blinkous.” Strickler waved at him halfheartedly.

They watch Blinky get into his car and start the vehicle. He peeled off with a loud screech on the pavement, making both of them cringe at the noise.

Barbara and Strickler went back inside.

“Looks like you two got along better than I thought,” said Barbara.

“Well, we try to make things as amicable as possible.”

“Uh huh. But I don’t agree feeding the babies candy--” referring to the large paper bag Blinky had bought earlier that day which was left on the couch “--with all that sugar in there. Unless you bought them for yourself though I never took you as someone who had a sweet tooth.”

“That was Blinkous’s doing. Those aren’t mine.”

“Then I guess that lollipop in your mouth isn’t yours either?”

Strickler had quite forgotten that he had that stick on his mouth the entire time. When he pulled it out, there was nothing left of the candy. It had been sucked dry.

“Blinky...” Strickler pouted as he whispered the name. He agreed with the troll that the taste was a bit sour at first, but after several licks, it became less so. It tasted a little sweet even. He smiled.

**Author's Note:**

> In case anyone's confused, yes, Strickler and Blinky haven't taken their masks off yet so they're still in their human form.


End file.
